Nobody's Fool

wings.”
    â€œI didn’t know buffalos
had
wings,” said Peter, who for some reason was fond of Birdie, or of her flattery of himself.
    Rub frowned, stared at Peter malevolently. “They don’t,” he said, then checked with Sully to make sure.
    â€œYou had two calls,” Birdie said. “Your ex and Mrs. Roebuck.”
    â€œOkay,” Sully said dubiously, fishing around in his pants pocket for change. “What’s your mother want to talk to me about?”
    â€œNo clue,” Peter said, insincerely, it seemed to Sully.
    He located two dimes. “She probably wants to inform me I’m not much of a grandfather,” he decided. “Okay if I tell her you already did?”
    â€œYou want to order, at least, before you run off?” Birdie said.
    â€œA hamburger,” Sully said.
    â€œYou don’t want to try the wings?”
    â€œAll right, suit yourself,” Sully said.
    â€œDon’t get huffy. I was just asking.”
    â€œCheeseburger,” Rub said when Birdie looked at him.
    â€œTry the wings,” Sully suggested.
    â€œOkay,” Rub said.
    â€œHow about you, handsome?” Birdie said to Peter.
    â€œHamburger. Fries.”
    â€œMake it easy on yourself,” Sully told her on the way to the pay phone. “Bring us three orders of wings.”
    Since there was no way to guess how long these calls would take, Sully took his bar stool with him and set it up beneath the pay telephone. He had two calls to make. One to the prettiest girl in Bath, who just conceivably might have been calling to extend some invitation, and one from his ex-wife, who’d almost certainly called to read him the riot act about something. Who to call back first?
    â€œHi, dolly,” Sully said when Toby Roebuck answered. “Your no-good husband’s down here at The Horse.” Clive Jr. and the woman he was with had left. Carl had joined a table of local businessmen and had begun to tell them what a putz Clive Jr. was, Sully could tell. “He just ordered lunch. I can be there in five minutes.”
    â€œYou talk a good fight over the phone,” she said. It was amazing how she never missed a beat calling his bluffs. In fact, it was probably this that convinced him that he
was
bluffing. “Besides,” she said. “You couldn’t be here in five minutes. It takes you that long just to climb the stairs.”
    â€œI bet I could cut my time in half for the right reason,” Sully told her. It was true. He did talk a good fight over the phone. “What the hell’s this I hear about you being knocked up?”
    â€œToo true,” Toby Roebuck admitted. “Is he still strutting and crowing?”
    â€œlike the little bantam rooster he is.”
    â€œYou gotta love him.”
    â€œNope,” Sully said. “
You
gotta love him.”
    â€œAnyway,” Toby Roebuck said like a woman who’d enjoyed about as much banter as she could stand. “Here’s the skinny on the house.”
    â€œWhat house?”
    â€œYour house, Sully. Turn the page. We’ve moved on to a new subject.”
    Sully remembered now that Carl had asked her to check on the status of the Bowdon Street house, and he became aware of something like a hope regarding it, a hope that was there before he could banish it.
    â€œTechnically,” she said, “you still own it.”
    â€œTechnically,” Sully repeated, not much caring for the sound of the word.
    â€œYou’re in what’s called a redemption period. You’ve been in it for over a month. You must have gotten a notice.”
    â€œI must’ve,” Sully agreed.
    Toby Roebuck let that go. “What it means is that somebody has contracted to purchase the house for back taxes. But if you come up with the same money by February first, the property reverts to you.”
    â€œWho bought it?”
    â€œI don’t know. The buyers are not required to disclose their identities.”
    Sully considered this. “Well,” he said after a moment, “whoever bought it is in for a big surprise, because I just sold the floors to your husband.”
    â€œHmmmm.”
    â€œWho would
want
it is what I’d like to know,” Sully said, though even as he wondered, it occurred to him that the owners of the Sans Souci might want the tiny postage stamp of property that abutted their land. Maybe they just wanted everything on the north